The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic by Peter Meredith

yet, Bob’s spell hadn’t cracked or diminished in any way. Jack suddenly realized he was killing himself for nothing. He couldn’t free her, at least not from the outside. And with his last action, Jack threw himself into the circle of glyphs.

Chapter 7
    Akron, Ohio
    Cynthia Childs
     
    Jack tried to save her, and failed. The pain took him.
    No words could describe the pain. It had made Cyn absolutely insane, but now it was suddenly half of what it had been and she did what any drowning person would do, she clawed her way across the floor as if she was clawing her way up the side of a stone cliff.
    Shockingly, amazingly, she was free of the pain, but before she could cry with happiness, she found herself in a new hell.
    The last thing she remembered before the eternal pain, was rushing forward into the shop, eager to fight Bob—then there was the pain. It was everything. It went on and on. It was unending and unbearable and the world outside of it ceased to exist to her. She knew nothing about Jack’s fight, or the fire or the girl.
    Now she stared. Her nerves burned and twitched, the pain still an echo that was slow to dissipate. She shook from head to toe as she stared, her mind trying to recover and right itself. What assaulted her eyes didn’t help. The herb shop was an inferno; the heat made her cringe; the smoke shriveled her lungs. She saw dead Bob Chapman going up in flames and there was a teenager who had been bled dry.
    And when she turned, and there was Jack in a circle of glyphs, his eyes peeled back so that the whites were gigantic. He had his mouth open as though he was screaming, but he made only a keening sound, like the rushing of wind.
    “Oh, God,” Cyn whispered, remembering suddenly a ghostly image of Jack trying to control his hands long enough to pull her out of there.
    He had tried to save her and he had failed. His power…or rather his goodness was too weak. Light drove out darkness and Jack’s soul wasn’t a good soul. She had known it before on an intellectual level, now she knew it on a deeper one.
    She felt sorry for him.
    That was her first feeling, when her mind righted itself and she could feel anything at all. She was sad for Jack. She hadn’t just seen his soul and its dreadful thinness, she had felt it. He was a desperate man, or he had been a minute before. Now, his desperation was a thousand times worse. She knew the pain he was feeling on an intimate level; that had been her a minute before.
    And that would be her once more.
    Now it was her turn to save him and she knew she could. The glyphs had been drawn to hold one person, not two. She would grab him and roll out of there. But it would hurt. Oh, God it would hurt. It would be similar to licking an electric socket a second time. It was one thing to wonder how much it would hurt to do it once, it was another to know how horrible, how utterly dreadful the pain was and then lick it again.
    The idea of facing such pain made her hesitate. She stood on the edge with her face screwed up and twice she had said: “One, two three!” But hadn’t budged. Only the fire coming closer and closer finally drove her into action. With a cringing whimper she stepped into the circle.
    Just like that, her world was pain; every single nerve ending cried out. It shocked her, but what almost shocked her more was Jack; she could feel his essence and it wasn’t thin or stretched or even gossamer, there was nothing to it but a whisper and a faint one at that. It was scary how far he had pushed himself to save her.
    And she would do the same. She had power though she never used it—she used it then in an attempt to hold back the pain. It went fast, eaten up by the evil of the spell. Grab Jack! her mind screamed.
    The holding spell wasn’t meant for two and she wasn’t meant to endure that sort of pain. She scrambled and kicked with desperate strength until they were both out of the circle and lying on the floor of the shop with the super heated